My Browning “Luftwaffe” 9mm

One day he came home with a 9mm Browning Hi-power handgun and an unusual story.

He told me that Browning had a factory in Belgium (FN) and licensed their Browning guns to the various European powers before WW2. (The Hi-Power has been used in over 50 countries for military, police and civilian use.)

He said that when the Germans invaded Belgium in 1940 they took over the Belgian Browning factory and issued their own troops Browning 9mm pistols after stamping them with Third Reich markings.

He claimed he had just purchased such a pistol and that it was quite valuable because it had the unique German stampings.

He gave it to me and I still have it. The markings are small but the inspection marks look like the small German eagles and “waffenamts” look like the WaA613 mentioned here:

Browning Hi-Power pistols were used during World War II by both Allied and Axis forces. After occupying Belgium in 1940, German forces took over the FN plant. German troops subsequently used the Hi-Power, having assigned it the designation Pistole 640(b) (“b” for belgisch, “Belgian”). Examples produced by FN in Belgium under German occupation bear German inspection and acceptance marks, or Waffenamts, such as WaA613. In German service, it was used mainly by Waffen-SS and Fallschirmjäger personnel.

My Browning definitely has the WaA613 stamping and according my German war historian friend most of those were issued to Luftwaffe personnel that included Fallschirmjager.

Editorial PS:

Today is a fitting day to publish this post because later today Obama is going to announce his farcical 19 executive actions under the smoke screen of “gun safety” and “child safety.” This administration has just about perfected the art of never wasting a crisis in order to advance it’s Marxist, unconstitutional agenda. Whatever EA’s this President tries to get to stick to the Constitutional wall please be assured they have nothing to do with saving anyone’s life nor gun safety. They will be about disarming the law-abiding citizens of this once great country. The fact that so many Americans do not seem to mind virtually guarantees our continued demise as we morph into Sweden.

I am one of the 250,000 Americans who recently joined the NRA although I have not fired a gun in over 20 years (I once owned a muzzle-loading Hawken gun and 40 years ago was trained in the Army how to use a M16) nor do I hunt, nor do I have any ammunition for my Browning Hi-Power which is in excellent firing condition. Nor do I have any ammunition for my M1 Garand rifle our country’s first semi-automatic rifle used in WW2 and beyond. Nor do I have any ammo for the other rifles in the WW2 collection that I inherited from my dad.

That is going to change over the next few days. I intend to buy a couple of boxes of 9mm ammo for the HI-Power. My friend and pastor who I work with used to be a policeman and he will train me in the proper use of a handgun.

Why now? Because it is my constitutional right to bear arms and it’s time.

Obama and his helpers are usurpers because they know they could never get what they want through the established checks and balance process.. They are systematically dismantling that which has made the US exceptional and I will now add my voice to those who will oppose him and I will learn proper gun safety.

The picture is from a well-known series of Waffen-SS soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge. The one on the right is holding a Hi-Power.